He told The Hill he “sees his foundation engaging in races,” and taking up issue advocacy on the behalf of minority and military conservatives.

According to its website, West’s new foundation is a “nonprofit, charitable organization.” Often, foundations are 501(c)(3) organizations that can’t engage in politics. But West has another entity at the same post office box, American Legacy Guardians, which, according to his former press secretary, is a 501(c)(4) group. Such groups can run political ads and make other expenditures supporting or attacking candidates, without disclosing their donors — and, in fact, spent more than $300 million in the 2012 election cycle.

West served one term in Congress, losing in November to Democrat Patrick Murphy. West didn’t concede the tight race until Nov. 20, after a recount.

On Dec. 28, West’s campaign committee, Allen West for Congress, transferred $250,000 in leftover funds to the foundation, and another $250,000 to American Legacy Guardians, according to the committee’s year-end report filed with the Federal Election Commission. The committee reported both transfers as “charitable donations.” Those could well be the last donations to either group whose sources are publicly disclosed.

SINGLE-CANDIDATE GROUPS DOMINATE: A new report by watchdog group Public Citizen finds that almost half of all outside spending groups backed a single candidate. The report, which is an update of an analysis first published in October, uses Center for Responsive Politics data on outside spending groups — which include super PACs and other organizations enabled by the Citizens United and other court decisions.

According to the report, which can be read here, there were 112 outside spending groups devoted to supporting just one candidate in the 2012 election cycle — 49.3 percent of all of the outside groups active in the 2012 cycle. Those groups spent about $353.6 million in the cycle. Another 10 groups that Public Citizen identified as closely allied with the Republican or Democratic parties spent another $280.5 million. Together these two types of groups accounted for 65.5 percent of all outside spending in the cycle.

This finding undercuts the rationale used by justices who backed the Citizens United ruling, the report argues.

“The court based its Citizens United decision on its assumption that the new electioneering spending it permitted would be by organizations that acted independently of candidates and parties,” the report reads. “The court concluded that independent expenditures do not threaten to engender corruption, which is the basis on which the court has traditionally permitted regulation of campaign expenditures.”

Except for the Revolving Door section, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License by OpenSecrets.org. To request permission for commercial use, please contact us.